Till The Bitter End
by Alayne Stone
Summary: Once again, a Baratheon and a Targaryen meet at the Trident for a final battle... Stannis vs. Dany, Davos POV. Post-ADWD. SPOILERS.


DAVOS

It was only natural the battle would happen at the Trident again. Robert's brother and Rhaegar's sister couldn't find a more fitting place for their final showdown.

By this time the false Aegon was dead, the Tyrells bent the knee to the dragon queen and Dorne was in ruins after Robert Strong and his mad Lannister bitch conquered it. Doran finally gave in when his daughter perished with the pretender Aegon and about the same time he received news of his son's horrible end. They said he died of a broken heart and Davos could understand it all too well.

Dorne wasn't the only place the undead giant and the Necromancer's dark armies swept over. Dragonstone and the surrounding lands fell first, and Davos Seaworth lost everything. History repeated itself: the false knight who cheated even the Stranger killed his innocent wife and children. Little comfort did it give him that in the end Strong and Cersei were destroyed by Sandor Clegane and the Kingslayer. Nothing could bring his family back.

All he had left was his king. A king whose cause was lost, trapped between two fires.

The dragon queen on the South. And Rhaegar's true son on the Wall, who refused to abandon his post or turn on the king. The red woman, however, did left her former hero and sided with Lord Snow.

Davos knew that of all the treasons Stannis had to suffer, Melisandre's wounded him the deepest.

Most of the Northern Lords advised him to yield, accept Daenerys for his queen and take the black. The queen herself sent him a message saying she would not only pardon him but give him Storm's End and a place in the small council. 'The land has bled enough, my lord' Daenerys wrote. 'We have a common foe. Would you make thousands die for your pride?'

Stannis didn't answer. He threw the letter in the fire and watched how the black and red seal melted and the three-headed dragon lost its form.

Lady Sansa, who returned to Winterfell with her faithful sworn sword, begged Stannis to stop, in the name of all gods.

"I know no gods anymore" the king said.

On the morning Stannis and his army departed from Winterfell, Lady Sansa watched with a cold look.

"You are no better than the Night's King" she said.

Davos knew they were marching into their doom.

When they were a day's ride from the Trident, they saw the dragons in the distance, circling in the air and breathing fire to the ground.

Davos remembered the Blackwater and could only imagine how hot dragon fire would be. Harrenhal. The Field of Fire. And he was out of his element now, on land, lost in snow, with the bad feeling that someone was following them, just out of sight. Stannis dismissed this suspicion.

"You're having visions, Lord Davos, just like all the rest of us. This damned weather does it" he said. "The Northern Lords left us, but they won't stab us in the back."

To their surprise, when they arrived at the frozen Trident, the dragons didn't attack.

They were there, on the other side of the river, with their mother and her army of Unsullied, sellswords, Tyrell bannermen and Dothraki.

The dragons were silent.

"They're waiting" Stannis said.

Davos could recognize some of the people across the water.

The silver-haired girl, sitting in the black dragon, looked but a child. And yet this child conquered half of Westeros already.

Tyrion Lannister, Hand of the Queen, on the back of the green dragon. Davos shuddered when he saw this man. The deadly trap at Blackwater was his work. What did he have in store this time?

Barristan Selmy. Loras Tyrell. Jorah Mormont. Three dothraki riders and a huge, dark-skinned eunuch, the Queen's personal guard.

_This must be a trap_, Davos thought.

"Enough of this" Stannis said, impatient as ever. "CHARGE!"

The army moved and soon they were riding at full speed towards the river.

Suddenly, Davos understood what was going to happen.

"No!" he cried out. "No, no, STOP!"

But it was too late.

The ice crashed under them. Hundreds of riders fell into the cold water and those who came after them couldn't stop in time either.

The dragons melted the ice yesterday. The river froze up again, but only a thin layer, not enough to hold them.

_This was the Imp's idea_, Davos could swear.

Less than half of the army could stop in time, and only a few dozen men could get out of the river.

The black dragon took wing, and soon he was above them.

_Would she now roast the rest of us?_ Davos didn't care anymore. Anything to end this nightmare.

"Lord Stannis!" The queen called from above. "You are doomed. This is your last chance to surrender. Bend the knee and you'll be allowed to take the black. Fail to do so and you're dead."

"Never, you bitch!" Stannis shouted back. "You're very brave when you speak from that high! Come and fight a real battle! Show the world what you are, burn us all!"

"Your men might think otherwise, my lord. Anyone who surrenders will be spared. I won't use my dragons against you. We should fight the Others. Put your pride aside. I will be waiting across the river. You will come to me, if not today, tomorrow, or a week from now. I leave you now, to freeze and starve."

And she vanished.

That night a lot of the men left to cross the river a few miles down. A little over three hundred stayed true, for the time being.

Stannis remained and Davos with him.

"Why don't you go?" The king asked. "I am finished, my faithful Onion Knight. Go and choose her. Live."

"What for?" All Davos felt was emptiness. He saw good men burn on the Blackwater and more of them freeze here in this accursed river. He had no family to go home to, no ship to sail, nothing. "All I have left is you, my king. You and my honour."

Stannis turned away but Davos saw the tears in his eyes, tears he was too proud to shed.

"Sharpen your sword, Davos" he said after a long silence.

He obeyed.

When night fell again, their unseen followers arrived and attacked.

At first they looked all grey as if they were phantoms of mist and snow. But when they were closer, Davos saw their banners and knew the end has come.

"The hyenas think all they have left to do is to feast on our corpses" Stannis said. "Let us show them we can still bite."

The hyenas wore two blue towers on grey. As always, the Late Lord Frey waited till it was certain who would be winning.

What followed was a massacre in the night, covered in snowfall as if the gods themselves dreaded to look upon it.

Davos didn't know how much time passed. He had lost Stannis from sight long ago. The field was covered with the dead, fires burned here and there. The dragon queen did not welcome the traitors.

He was bleeding from many cuts but not dead, still not dead. _Why won't you take me, Stranger? Why?_

He found his king lying in the snow, pale as a ghost, his tunic soaked with blood. "No. Please, no." He fell on his knees. "My lord… my king…"

Stannis opened his eyes.

"You were right" he whispered. "The Freys were on our trail all along."

Davos took him in his arms.

"My king…" He gave in to his tears. "I won't allow you to die. Not you too."

Even in his agony, Stannis remained calm and dignified.

"I should have accepted his peach" he murmured.

"My lord?" Perhaps he was already in delirium. Peach? How could he think of peaches on a snowy battlefield?

"You forgot it" Stannis said. He coughed. "My brother… at Storm's End. He offered me…"

"Oh, yes." He remembered now. After all this time, his king was tormented with guilt.

"Davos… go to the dragon queen when I'm dead. She will forgive you."

"Don't speak of death, my king. You cannot die, not like this."

For a moment the king looked at him with the old stern glare.

"Stop lying to yourself, Davos! You have seen enough battles to know when a man is dying."

_Scold me, yell with me, just don't die._

"Forgive me, my dear king" he said. "It's too much to bear."

Stannis closed his eyes for a moment to hide his pain.

When he looked at Davos again, the old smuggler remembered the day when a young lord punished him and knighted him.

"My poor Davos" the king struggled with the words. He had to fight for every breath, and Davos knew it was only his iron will that made him hold on. "You were my most faithful man. The only one who always dared to tell me the truth. I never knew a heart more pure and noble, a knight more true. And all you got for it was grief and suffering."

Davos was still crying.

"I shall never follow another king. Do not ask me to bend the knee to the dragon queen, my lord. This one command I cannot obey."

Stannis didn't answer. His cold blue eyes met his knight's and he reached for Davos' hand that was holding him by the shoulder. The hand he mutilated years ago.

"You were just" the knight said.

"To think you've never wanted revenge, not in the slightest. Anyone else would've wanted to strike back."

_Not me_, Davos thought.

Speaking so much at once made the king exhausted. He coughed again, and now his stoic mask broke, the pain was visible on his face.

Davos never felt so helpless. There was nothing he could do.

The first sign of dawn appeared on the horizon, a streak of pale light, but the sky was still dark when the king breathed his last.

Davos laid him back to the ground, gently as if he was afraid to wake him.

Then he staggered back to his feet and searched for a banner. Ever since Melisandre left them, they used the Baratheon sigil again. What he found was torn and blood-stained, but it would do.

He stuck in it the ground to mark the spot where his king fell. He was sure Queen Daenerys would give Stannis a proper funeral. From what he heard of the girl, she seemed like a just person, and she knew defeating the Others was more important than this pointless civil war. _Perhaps she will be a good queen. But not mine._

He knelt beside his king's body again, looked at that adamant face, those strict eyes. Even in death, Stannis wasn't defeated.

Davos drew his sword.

_You made me sharpen it. Good that you did._

For one moment, he put it down, to close his king's eyes and kiss his forehead.

"Farewell, my king. Farewell and forgive me."

He pressed the hilt against the ground and fell upon the blade.

The gods were merciful to him. He felt almost no pain, just slipped down at his king's side, the snow deep red all around them. Davos sighed and he moved no more.


End file.
